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"WILY BEGUILED" 



A DISSERTATION 

SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY 

OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND LITERATURE 

IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF 

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH 



BY 

BALDWIN MAXWELL 



Private Edition, Distributed By 

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO LIBRARIES 

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 

1922 



Reprinted from 
Studies in Philology, Vol. XIX, No. 2, April 1922 



XTbe Tllntrersits of Cbtcaao 



"WILY BEGUILED" 



A DISSERTATION 

SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY 

OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND LITERATURE 

IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF 

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH 



BY 

BALDWIN MAXWELL 



Private Edition, Distributed By 

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO LIBRARIES 

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 

1922 



Reprinted from 
Studies in Philology, Vol. XIX, No. 2, April 1022 



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PREFACE 

This reprint from Studies in Philology represents a section of a 
dissertation submitted in the Graduate School of the University of 
Chicago in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of 
Doctor of Philosophy. It was originally planned that the study should 
include the text of Wily Beguiled with an introduction and notes. 
Because of the increased cost of printing, however, it was thought 
unnecessary to print the text, there being already two excellent 
texts of the play easily accessible, and the printing requirement was 
reduced to what were considered the most interesting and most 
important sections of the dissertation. The sections which are not 
here reprinted were entitled (a) "Personal Satire," (b) "Parallel 
Passages," and (c) "Robin Goodfellow." The personal satire of 
Wily consists apparently of unconnected thrusts, like the thrusts at 
Ben Jonson noted on pages 208 ff. and 218 n. ; certainly there is no 
such complete and extended satire as Fleay pictured in his Shakespeare 
Manual (pp. 272-79) and his Biographical Chronicle (II, 158-62). 
Of the parallel passages noted the most interesting were in A Knight 
of the Burning Pestle, where the similarities are so close as to con- 
vince me that Beaumont made use of Wily in the construction of his 
play. (These parallels are printed in Modern Language Notes, 
XXXV, 503-4.) In the section devoted to Robin Goodfellow I 
attempted to study his development and to trace his appearances 
through Elizabethan literature. 

It is with real pleasure that I take this opportunity to thank 
those who have guided me through my studies. To Professor Edwin 
Greenlaw I owe my first interest in Elizabethan drama. To Pro- 
fessor John M. Manly, to Professor Tom Peete Cross, and especially 
to Professor Charles R. Baskervill I am indebted for suggestions and 
corrections more than I can enumerate. With the remembrance 
of association with men such as these, one may even today enter the 
teaching profession, repeating with St. Bernard, 

Deus Bone! quanta pauperibus procuras solatia. 



[Reprinted from Studies in Philology, Vol. xix, 2, April, 1922] 



WILY BEGUILED 1 
By Baldwin Maxwell 

Although Wily Beguiled has long been acknowledged one of the 
sprightliest and merriest of the anonymous Elizabethan comedies, 
there seems never to have been a serious study of its date or of its 
authorship. The play merits more attention not only because of 
its excellence but also because of (1) its possible connection with the 
Wylie Beguylie performed at Merton College, Oxford, in 1566/7, 
(2) its suggested relation to the group of Parnassus plays per- 
formed at Cambridge around 1600, (3) its imitations and reflec- 
tions of other plays of the period, and (4) the personal satire which 
Fleay recognized in it. 

1 Under 12 November, (1606), there appears in the Register of the Sta- 
tioners' Company the following entry : 

Entered for his Copie vnder thandes of master Hartwell and Clement 
knighte bothe the wardens A booke called Wylie beguilde. &c . vj d / 

(Arber's Transcript, in, 333.) 
In accordance with this entry an edition — presumably the first edition — 
appeared in this year with the title-page: A/ PLEASANT/ COMEDIE,/ 
Called/ WILY BEGVILDE./ The Chiefe Actors be these:/ A poore 
Scholler, a rich Foole, and a/ Knaue at a shifte./ AT LONDON./ Printed 
by H. L. for CLEMENT KNIGHT:/ and are to be solde at his Shop, in 
Paules/ Church-yard, at the signe of the Holy Lambe./ 1606./ Two 
further editions were printed for Clement Knight, one by W. W., (William 
White), at an unknown date, one by Thomas Purfoot in 1623. A fourth 
and a fifth edition were printed in 1630 and 1655; and a sixth edition 
was printed for Thomas Alchorn in 1638. Copies of the 1606 edition 
are preserved in the Bodleian Library, the Dyce Collection and the 
collection of the Duke of Devonshire; while the British Museum contains 
copies of all the other editions. "Of that printed by W. White only 
the one copy is now known. In this the date, which apparently was 
given, has been torn away. White is not known as a printer after 
about 1617, and internal evidence also shows his edition to be earlier 
than Purfoot's, that is than 1623. Doubt might even exist as to the 
priority of the edition of 1606 were it not that the device upon the 
undated title-page is known to be pretty certainly not earlier than 1611." 
(Greg, Malone Society Reprint, v-vi.) The play has been reprinted in 
Hawkins, Origins, in, in Hazlitt, Dodsley's Old English Plays, ix, in the 
Malone Society Reprints, 1912, and in the Tudor Facsimile Texts, 1912. 
206 



Baldwin Maxwell 20? 



Modern critics have generally agreed that the play is several 
years older than the earliest known edition, that of 1606. Malone 
was the first, I think, to suggest the date 1596, which the majority 
of modern writers have continued to accept. He thought that 
Wily Beguiled must have been written in that year, for there then 
appeared the following passage in Nash's Have with you to Saffron 
Walden: 

But this was our Gabriel Hagiels tricke of Wily Beguily herein, that 
whereas he could get no man of worth to cry Placet to his workes, or 
meeter it in his commendation, those worthless Whippets and Jack Straws 
hee could get he would seeme to enoble and compare with the highest.* 

The only way in which this passage suggests the play is in the 
mention of the "tricke of Wily Beguily." But as Hales pointed 
out, the expression Wily Beguily was known before 1590. Hales 
quoted a passage from Dr. John Harvey's Discoursiue Proolem 
Concerning Prophesies, 1588, in which the expression is found. 
But it must have been common before that. It appears, of course, 
as the title of the Oxford play of 1566/7; Florio used it in his 
translation of Montaigne's essay on " The Art of Conferring " ; 3 
and it is to be found in Latimer's letters. 4 

The majority of critics have continued to accept 1596 as the 
probable date, though the evidence which has been introduced has 
been only of such nature as to fix 1596 as the earliest possible date. 
Fleay observes: "That the original date of this play is 1596/7 I 
have no doubt. It contains passages distinctly parodying Romeo 
and Juliet . . . and The Merchant of Venice . . . , but no allu- 
sion to any later play of Shakespeare." 5 Ward says : " Wily Be- 
guiled, although not printed till 1606, was clearly written at a 
considerably earlier date. It must have been composed after the 
production of both The Merchant of Venice, a famous passage in 
which it adopts and parodies, and Borneo and Juliet." Ward also 
accepts the suggestion in the foot-notes of Hazlitt's Dodsley that 

2 Quoted by Hales, " Wily Beguiled and The Merchant of Venice," Essays 
and Notes on Shakespeare, pp. 212-213. 

3 Book III, Chap. vin. 

4 Letter of May 15, 1555. Strype, Eccl. Mem., vi, 307. 
5 Biog. Chron., n, 159. 



208 Wily Beguiled 

the mention of Churms' having been " a souldier at Cales " refers 
to the expedition of the Earl of Essez to Cadiz in 1596. 6 Though 
we admit the truth of these observations, we can say only that Wily 
Beguiled was not written before 1596. 

Professor J. W. Hales and Dr. Brinsley Nicholson place the play 
" in or after 1601," but, so far as I know, their reasons have never 
been printed. After discussing the parodies of Shakspere and 
Malone's dating of the play, Professor Hales closes with: "What 
is the real date there is no space now to discuss. I will only say 
that Dr. Brinsley Nicholson has kindly placed at my free dis- 
posal certain notes of his on the subject, in which he concludes, 
on the whole, that the play was written ' in or after 1601/ " 7 
That the correct date of the play in the form in which we have 
it is late 1601 or early 1602 I shall attempt to show by connecting 
certain references in Wily Beguiled with the quarrel then at its 
height between Ben Jonson and his fellow dramatists. 

In Satirornastix Tucca upbraids Horace for having brought him 
upon the stage as a juggler: 

lie teach thee to turne me into Bankes his horse, and to tell gentlemen 
I am a juggler, and can shew tricks. 8 

The latest editor of this play in a note on this passage apparently 
accepts Fleay's interpretation, quoting approvingly from Fleay to 
the effect that "In the Prologue [to Wily Beguiled'] a juggler 
enters and offers to show tricks. Now in the second scene of 
Dekker's Satirornastix, Captain Tucca says to Horace, i. e., Jonson, 
' I'll teach thee ... to tell gentlemen I am a juggler, and can 
show tricks/ I have searched in vain for any passage either in 
Jonson's works, or in any play in which he could possibly have had 
a hand, corresponding to this description, except this Prologue, 
which must therefore, I think, be assigned to Jonson. . . ." 9 

Neither Fleay nor Penniman seems to have noticed the similar- 
ity between another passage in Wily Beguiled and a speech of Tucca 
almost immediately following the above speech. When Blunt tells 

9 History of English Dramatic Literature, n, 612. 
7 Op. cit., p. 214. 
"Act I, scene 2, 368-370. 

• Fleay, Biog. Chron., n, 159; quoted by Penniman in his edition of 
Poetaster and Satirornastix, Belles Lettres Series, 408. 



Baldwin Maxwell 209 

Tucca that he must shake hands with Horace, Tucca interrupts 
him with: 

Not hands with great Hunkes there, not hands, but He shake the gull- 
groper out of his tan'd skinne. 10 

As Jonson is here clearly called Hunkes and as there is abundant 
evidence of his slowness and painstaking in composition, there can 
be no doubt that it is to Jonson that Will Cricket in Wily Beguiled 
refers when he says: 

For (do you marke) I am none of these sneaking fellowes that wil 
stand thrumming of Caps, and studying vppon a matter, as long as Hunkes 
with the great head has beene about to show his little wit in the second 
part of his paultrie poetrie. u 

The " second part of his paultrie poetrie " is, I think, Poetaster,. 
Cynthia's Bevels being understood as the first. The " second part " 
as here used does not, of course, mean the second piece of compo- 
sition; nor does it mean the second of his pieces connected with 
the stage quarrel. Second is here used in the sense of a continua- 
tion or of something promised. That Poetaster was considered a 
continuation of the attacks of Cynthia's Bevels, that it was long 
promised and awaited, is evident from the speech of Envy, prefac- 
ing its Prologue : 

What's here? THE ARRAIGNMENT! ay; this, this is it, 
That our sunk eyes have waked for all this while: 

these fifteen weeks, 
So long as since the plot was but an embrion, 
Have I, with burning lights mixt vigilant thoughts, 
In expectation of this hated play. 13 

If Jonson had a hand in the Induction to Wily Beguiled as 
Fleay supposed, either this Induction was written for an entirely 
different play and later used by one of his enemies, or Jonson 
WTote an induction to a play in which he himself was satirized. 

10 Act I, scene 2, 11. 387-389. 

^Malone Society Reprint, 11. 1613-1617. (The line references through- 
out are to this edition.) The suggestion is made in a footnote in Haz- 
litt's Dodsley that this passage alludes to some real circumstance and 
person (ix, 292). No identification, however, is hazarded. 

"Lines 3-4; 14-17. 



210 Wily Beguiled 

It is much more plausible that Jonson had no hand whatever in 
Wily Beguiled. 

Nor is it necessary, I think, to seek elsewhere than in Jonson's 
known works for an explanation of Tucca' s resentment. It may, 
of course, be argued that as the passage in Satiromastix unites the 
references to Banks' horse and the juggler, the resentment was 
due to a passage in one of Jonson's plays in which both the juggler 
and the horse appear. As I have said, however, it is clear that 
Poetaster was considered a continuation of Cynthia's Bevels, and 
the authors of Satiromastix, in replying to the two plays, would 
regard them as a unit. In none of his extant plays does Jonson 
turn anyone into " Bankes his horse " ; but if the passage be taken 
figuratively, Penniman may be right in thinking that " the refer- 
ence here is probably to Poetaster, in, 4, a scene in which Tucca 
causes the Pyrgi to perform as Banks caused his horse to show 
tricks." 13 If Penniman be correct in his identification of the first 
part of the accusation, it is quite probable that the second part — 
that Tucca had been turned into a juggler and made to show tricks 
— is to be found in Cynthia's Bevels. In the Induction to this 
play, Jonson, in satirizing those that give advice in the theatre, 
makes the Second Child say: 

A third great-bellied juggler talks of twenty years since, and when Mon- 
sieur was here, and would enforce all wits to be of that fashion, because 
his doublet is still so. u 

True, the juggler is not here literally brought upon the stage and 
made to do tricks, but it is evident from the other speeches of the 
Induction that the Children did mimic the censurers as they spoke 
their lines, and from such mimicking it would have been easy for 
the spectators to have recognized in the person aped by the Second 
Child such a well-known character as Captain Hannam must have 
been. 

However, tne identification in Jonson's plays of the passages 
referred to by Tucca lies outside the present problem. Regardless 
of whether we accept the references I have suggested or of whether 
we prefer to believe that the references were to passages in a lost 
play by Jonson, we can, if I am correct in believing that the 

13 Op. cit., p. 408. 

M Works, ed. Gifford, 1858, p. 168. 



Baldwin Maxwell 211 

Hunkes passage in Wily refers to Cynthia's Bevels and Poetaster, 
assign the composition of Wily Beguiled in its present form to a 
fairly definite date. It must have been written at least several 
months after Cynthia's Bevels: 

'" . . . as long as Hunkes with the great head has beene about to show 
his little wit in the second part of his paultrie poetrie." 

The phrase has beene about to show is perhaps ambiguous. Pos- 
sibly it means that Poetaster, though long promised, had not yet 
appeared. I think, however, the more likely interpretation is that 
Poetaster had appeared very shortly before. Either interpretation 
would result in practically the same date. Cynthia's Bevels was 
performed in the fall of 1600, Poetaster in 1601. Under the first 
interpretation Wily Beguiled should be assigned to 1601 ; under 
the second to late 1601 or possibly to the first months of 1602. 
That the second interpretation is the more likely is indicated by 
the use which the author of Wily made of other plays. In pas- 
sages which I have already quoted, Fleay and Ward call attention 
to borrowings in Wily from The Merchant of Venice and Borneo 
and Juliet and argue from them that Wily must have been written 
shortly after the production of these two plays. Both of these 
plays, however, were probably still being acted in 1600, and there 
can be no argument that an author would be more apt to borrow 
from a play soon after its initial production than after it had 
shown its worth by several years of continued popularity. Pro- 
fessor Moore Smith, moreover, contributed to The Shakspere 
Allusion Booh the following parallel between Wily and Hamlet: 

He make him fly swifter than meditation. 

(Wily, Prologue, 1. 37.) 
with wings as swift 
As meditation, or the thoughts of love. 

(Hamlet, i, v, 30.) 

The editor notes that "there is difficulty in the date" and that 
" The Wily Beguilde passage may be coincidence " or " a borrow- 
ing from Hamlet in its earlier form." 1B However, as the author 
of Wily clearly borrows from other plays of Shakspere and as 
Hamlet was produced during late 1601 or the opening weeks of 

15 Munro, The Shakspere Allusion Book, i, 30. 



212 Wily Beguiled 

1602 — just the time at which the reference to Jonsori would place 
Wily Beguiled — it seems more reasonable to admit the parody. 

Likewise, The Spanish Tragedy, from which Wily borrows most 
frequently, 16 was at this same time revived upon the London 
stage, as is witnessed by the entry in Henslowe's Diary under 
September 25, 1601, recording the payment of forty shillings 
to Jonson " vpon his writtinge of his adicians in geronymo." 17 

In dating the play, I have been careful to speak of it as " Wily 
Beguiled in the form in which we now have it." It is, of course, 
possible that there was a version prepared in 1596-7, and that the 
reference to Jonson and perhaps a borrowing from Hamlet were 
inserted in 1601-2. I see no reason, however, for supposing that 
there was a 1596-7 version. Though the iplay obviously shows 
signs of revision, the original version should, I believe, be placed 
far back of 1596. 

II 

The first attempt to assign Wily Beguiled to a definite author 
was made by Herr Bernardi in the Hamburger Litter aturblatt in 
1856. Bernardi assigned it to Shakspere. I have been unable to 
examine his article, but it obviously merits the contempt with 
which critics have ignored it. Both Dyce and Fleay ascribed the 
play to Peele, and most modern critics have inclined to their view. 
The basis for the ascription is the passage in the Induction where 
a juggler, coming in, addresses the Prologue as " humorous 
George." Ward says that if Peele was the " ' humorous George ' 
of the Prologue to the later version of this play, he may very 

18 Professor Sarrazin in his Thomas Kyd und sein Kreis, Berlin, 1892, 
pp. 75 ff., pointed out a large number of these borrowings, but one can 
easily increase his list. It seems that in the majority of cases the author 
of Wily used the language of Kyd to heighten his own style, though at 
times — notably in the speeches of Robin in scene xvi — passages from The 
Spanish Tragedy are burlesqued. 

17 Greg, i, 149. It should be noted, however, that among the many 
borrowings from The Spanish Tragedy none of the additions by Jonson 
is referred to. From such omissions it may be argued that, as Jonson is 
elsewhere satirized in the play, the composition of Wily must antedate 
his revision of The Spanish Tragedy; but the more probable supposition, 
I think, is that Wily was in no sense a purposed attack upon Jonson, 
though the author introduced an occasional thrust or two in his direction. 



Baldwin Maxwell 213 

probably have been author at least in part of it in its original 
form." 18 Schelling and Baker agree that there is " nothing . . . 
to raise a question of Peele's authorship except the simple obvious- 
ness with which the plot is developed " 19 — " a trait in which Peele 
cannot be considered conspicuous." 20 Miss Martha Gause Mc- 
Caulley and Mr. Penniman, however, go so far as to call the play 
" Peele's Wily Beguiled/' 21 

But if I am correct in the dating of the play, Wily could not 
in its present form have been written before 1601, some two years 
after Peele's death. However, since Professor Ward has sug- 
gested two versions, and as I shall later argue that our version 
represents a revision, I should perhaps give my reasons for doubt- 
ing Peele's authorship of even an earlier version. In the first 
place, the value of the " humorous George " passage as a basis for 
ascription has, I think, been greatly overestimated. The term 
humorous as here used does not seem to fit the jesting Peele, for 
here it clearly means melancholy, " in the dumps." Further, we 
have no evidence of Peele's ever acting as Prologue to his plays, 
and unless he did, there could be no significance to the juggler's 
addressing the Prologue as "humorous George." It is, I think, 
much more tplausible that the George referred to was not the author 
but one of the popular actors of the day, perhaps George Brian. 
Or possibly the George may be no more definite than the frequent 
Jack, which also appears in the Induction. 

Though the language of Edward I, and especially some of the 
figures, remind one of Wily Beguiled, to the other plays of Peele 
Wily bears little resemblance, except that all of Peele's work, like 
Wily, abounds in highly figurative language. But most, if not 
all, of the similar figures in Wily and Edward I were conventional 
figures of the age and may be paralleled in the plays of numerous 
other dramatists. In the nature of the comedy and in dramatic 
technique, moreover, there are several striking differences between 

^Hist. of Eng. Dram. Lit., I, 375. 

19 Baker, Cambridge History of English Literature, v, 145. 

20 Schelling, Elizabethan Drama, I, 320. 

31 McCaulley, " Function and Content of the Prologue, Chorus, and Other 
Non-Organic Elements in the English Drama, from the Beginnings to 
1642." University of Pennsylvania Studies in English Drama, First series, 
1917, p. 198. Penniman, Poetaster and Satiromastix (Belles-Lettres Se- 
ries), p. 408. 



214 "Wily Beguiled 

Wily and the plays of Peele. The comic scenes in Wily, totally 
unlike Peele' s in their broad humor, are far too good to have come 
from the pen of George Peele. In none of his iplays can be found 
such sprightly popular types as Will Cricket, Pegge Pudding, and 
Mother Midnight. 

A still more striking contrast is presented in the differences in 
technique. Nowhere in Peele, for example, is any use made of 
dramatic irony. In Wily Beguiled, however, the author used 
dramatic irony at every opportunity. Churms, in planning with 
Lelia their elopement, declares: 

If on th'aduenture all the dangers lay, 
That Europe or the westerne world affords, 
(WIere it to combate Cerberus himself e, 
Or scale the brasen walles of Plutoes court; 
When as there is so faire a prize propos'd, 
If I shrinke backe or leaue it vnperform'd, 
Let the World canonize me for a Coward: 

Should Sophos meete vs there accompanied with some 

Champion, 

Wfith whome twere any credit to encounter, 

Were he as stout as Hercules himselfe, 

Then would I buckle with them hand to hand: 

And bandy blowes as thicke as hailestones fall, 

And carrie Lelia away in spite of all their force. 22 

Though the audience knows that a beating is in store for him at 
the hands of Fortunatus, who with Sophos is awaiting them by 
the forest side, Churms little suspects that he is to have any 
adventure or that the journey will prove other than the most quiet. 
So also, just before word is brought to him that Churms has 
eloped with Lelia, Gripe tells us of his happiness and of his con- 
fidence in Churms: 

Euery one tels me I looke better then I was wont, 

My hearts lightened, my spirits are reuiued, 

Why me thinkes I am eene young againe; 

It ioyes my heart that this same peeuish girle my daughter 

will be rul'd at the last yet: 

[But I shall neuer be able to make M. Churmes amends for 

the great paines he has taken. 23 

22 Lines 1817-1823, 1836-1842. 
"Lines 2244-2251. 



Baldwin Maxwell 215 

Nowhere, I have said, does Peele use dramatic irony. The nearest 
approach to it is to be found in The Arraignment of Paris, where 
Paris swears that he will always remain true to Oenone. At the 
time of his oaths the situation that was to make him desert her 
had, of course, not developed, as he had not yet met the goddesses. 
If this be a case of dramatic irony at all, it is entirely different 
from the dramatic irony of Wily, where, for instance, we have 
learned from the action long before Gripes' speech that the 
" great paines " Churms has taken are toward an end just oppo- 
site to what Gripe supposes. 

Another noteworthy difference in technique is to be seen in the 
opening. In the first scene of Wily Beguiled Gripe enters solus, 
and in a speech more than a ipage in length explains the situation 
at the opening, tells of his own wealth, of his son who " followes 
the wars," of the bringing up which he has bestowed upon his 
daughter, and of his plan to marry her to the heir of rich Ploddall. 
In none of the five plays usually ascribed to Peele is there any 
such expository opening. None even begins with a soliloquy, there 
being in every case three or more characters discovered in the 
opening scene. 

There is, too, a striking difference in the development of the 
action. It may almost be said that it is the unvarying rule for a 
character in Wily Beguiled to inform the audience of his plan to 
perform an act before he performs it. Compare, for instance, the 
lines following lines 30, 74, 438, 1037, et passim. Nothing of 
this sort is to be found in the plays of Peele. 

There is also considerable internal evidence of another kind 
that argues against Peele's authorship of Wily Beguiled. Little, 
however, can be got from a comparison of the meter and alliter- 
ation. The number of rhymed lines shows nothing; for though 
the percentage of rhymed lines in Wily Beguiled is more than 
twice as great as the added percentage of rhymed lines in the 
Arraignment of Paris, David and Bethsaoe, and Battle of Alcazar, 
yet there are more rhymed lines in Edward I, corrupt though 
the text be, than in Wily Beguiled. Neither does an examina- 
tion of feminine endings or run-on-lines argue against Peele's 
authorship. Though Wily Beguiled shows a larger percentage of 
feminine endings and a smaller percentage of run-on-lines than 
the Arraignment of Paris, David and Bethsaoe, and Battle of 



216 Wily Beguiled 

Alcazar, yet the differences between these plays and The Old Wives 
Tale are much greater than between them and Wily Beguiled. 

The frequency of the alliteration in Wily Beguiled might at first 
glance suggest Peele's authorship. In the Arraignment of Paris 
there are 207 cases of alliteration; in David and Bethsdbe 100; 
in Edward I 110 ; in Wily Beguiled 175. But in Wily Beguiled 
the alliteration seems to be of a slightly simpler kind. In Peele, 
on the average, about 50% of the cases consist of two words begin- 
ning with the same letter; under this head fall 74.29% of the 
cases in Wily Beguiled. The percentage of cases in which three 
words begin with the same letter is in Peele about 37.89, in Wily 
but 15.42. 

Of more value, however, is the evidence furnished by the use 
of Latin phrases. The number of these phrases shows nothing. 
In Edward I Peele uses 20; in The Old Wives Tale 8; in The 
Battle of Alcazar ; in David and Bethsabe ; and in The Arraign- 
ment of Paris 1, omitting of course in the last play the Latin 
speeches with which the gifts were (presented to Elizabeth. In 
Wily there are 12. But there is a striking difference in the way 
these phrases are used. Of the 29 cases in Peele, 5 are exclama- 
tions : 

O Cupido, quantus, quantus! (Edward I, line 1313.) 

Facinus scelus, infandum nefas! (Ibid., line 2757.) 

O caelum! O terra! O maria! O Neptune! (O. W. T., line 16.) 

O falsum Latinum! (Ibid., line 348.) 

Adeste, daemones! (Ibid., line 505.) 

Of the twelve Latin phrases in Wily none is an exclamation. 
Peele, too, made use of Latin salutations: 

Pax vobis, Pax vobis. 

Et cum spiritu tuo. (Edward I, line 402.) 

Dominus vobiscum. 

Et cum spiritu tuo. (Ibid., lines 2707-8.) 

Bona Nox. (O. W. T., line 125.) 

There is no Latin salutation in Wily Beguiled. On the other 
hand, of the 29 Latin phrases in Peele only one appears to be a 
popular saying or proverb ; 24 whereas of the 12 bits of Latin in 

a * Edward I, line 1526. 



Baldwin Maxwell 217 

Wily — of the 7 bits consisting of more than two words — 4 are 
obviously popular sayings: 

Idem est non apparere et non esse. (Line 1150.) 
Virtus sine Censu languet. (Line 800.) 
Qui dissimulare nescit, nescit vivere. (Line 542.) 
iSi nihil attuleris &c. 25 (Line 514.) 

Again, a good proportion of Peele's Latin is to be traced to the 
Church service: 

Secula seculorum (Edward I, line 490.) 

Peccavi miserere David 

In amo amavi {Ibid., lines 1504-05.) 

Per misericordiam (Ibid., line 2392.) 

Or a pro nobis {Ibid., lines 2540.) 

Dominus vobiscum 

Et cum spiritu tuo (Ibid., lines 2707-08.) 

(Only one of the foregoing phrases, it should be noted, is iput in 
the mouth of the priest.) None of the Latin in Wily seems to 
have been in any way suggested by the service. Similarly, at 
least three of Peele's Latin phrases are direct quotations from 
Horace, 26 from whom the author of Wily does not quote. 

I have pointed out that between Wily Beguiled and the plays 
of Peele there are differences in the use of Latin phrases, in alli- 
teration, and in the nature of the comic material; and a very 
striking contrast in dramatic technique. In view of the absence 
of any external evidence for assigning Wily to Peele, these differ- 
ences are, I think, sufficient to warrant our denying him the author- 
ship of even an earlier form of the play. 

The fact that Jonson is satirized in Wily Beguiled immediately 
suggests the possibility of Wily's having been written or reworked 
by Marston. Albano in What You Will laments the same situa- 
tion which Wily portrays: 

25 Si nihil attuleris, ibis Homere foras. This " olde sayd Saw " was used 
by Nash in his preface to Greene's lfenaphon (Gregory Smith, Elizabethan 
Critical Essays, I, 318) ; and it appears in the Return from Parnassus, 
Part I, lines 1526-27. 

88 Edward I, line 202 is taken from Ars Poet., 139. 
Edward I, line 678 is taken from Scrm., I, 3, 6. 
Edward I, lines 1923-4 are from Epistles, I, 2, 68-9. 
87 in, ii, 66-67. 



218 Wily Beguiled 

'tis now the age of gold, — 
For it all marreth, and even virtue's sold. 27 

There are, too, a number of verbal similarities between Wily and 
the works of Marston, but on close examination these prove to 
be neither so striking nor so numerous as similarities between Wily 
and the works of other dramatists. The verse of Wily is most 
obviously not the verse of Marston ; it is far more lyric and full of 
more elaborate conceits. There would be no justification for our 
assuming that the author of Wily intended burlesque in his elabo- 
rate "Furor Poeticus" language, or that he regarded his verse 
as in other than the best strain; but his verse is the very type 
that Marston, in the mouth of Slip, satirizes in What You Will: 

. Shall I speak like a poet? — 
thrice hath the horned moon — . M 

Moreover, if Marston were WTiting or revising Wily Beguiled 
in 1601 or 1602, he would, desiring to attack Jonson, hardly have 
contented himself with two or three thrusts, 29 or indeed with 
less than the most outspoken satire. That the satire, however, 
consists merely in odd thrusts, the author not having deliberately 
set out to satirize Jonson, is indicated by the fact that, though 
the Spanish Tragedy is burlesqued in a great number of cases, 
not one of the additions by Jonson is referred to. 

28 in, i, 72-73. 

28 1 have called attention to the passage in which Jonson is spoken of as 
Hunks. It is possible that there is also a thrust at Jonson in the reference 
by the Prologue to Spectrum: 

" Spectrum is a looking glasse indeede 
Wherein a man a History may read, 
Of base conceits and damned roguerie: 
The very sinke of hell-bred villeny." 

In the Prologue to Every Man in his Humour Jonson says that he " would 
shew an image of the times," and in the Induction to Every Man out of his 
Humour Asper declares: 

" Well, I will scourge those apes, 
And to these courteous eyes oppose a mirror, 
As large as is the stage whereon we act; 
Where they shall see the time's deformity 
Anatomized in every nerve, and sinew, 
With constant courage, and contempt of fear." 



Baldwin Maxwell 219 



III 



Mr. Boas dismisses Wily Beguiled with the observation that 
it " was probably a Cambridge play/' 30 and Mr. Greg hazards 
the suggestion that it was " a Cambridge piece of the circle of 
Parnassus." 31 Beyond the fact that Wily seems to be a school 
play, I can find but two reasons for connecting it with Cambridge : 
first, the mention of Momus in the Prologue to Wily is, as Fleay 
pointed out, 32 in the same spirit as the Induction to the Return 
from Parnassus, Part II, and second, Churms' stating that he had 
been " at Cambridge a Scholler/' 33 Eeferences to Momus, how- 
ever, occur far too frequently in the drama of the time to allow 
our giving much weight to his mention here. 34 Similarly the 
mention of Churms' having been " at Cambridge a Scholler " 
seems to deserve little consideration. In the first place Cambridge 
may have been used for alliteration. Churms says : " I haue beene 
at Cambridge a Scholler, at Cales a Souldier, and now in the 
Country a Lawyer, and the next degree shal be a Connicatcher." 
Again, it should be noted that Churms is the villain of the play. 
Had it been Sophos who had been at Cambridge, there might be 
reason for the claim ; but a Cambridge audience could hardly have 
felt complimented in seeing a son of Cambridge do all in his power 
to cozen Sophos, the personification of learning. Possibly the 
reference is meant for a good-natured " slam " — perhaps by a 

80 University Drama in the Tudor Age, p. 157 n., and Cambridge Hist. 
Eng. Lit., vi, 338 n. 

31 M alone Society Reprint, p. vii. 
S2 Biog. Chron., n, 158. 

33 Line 68. 

34 The mention of Momus might equally well be offered as an argument 
for Oxford authorship. William Gager had, at the close of a series of 
performances at Oxford in 1592, brought upon the stage this god of ridi- 
cule, who attacked acting and plays in general. Momus' criticisms were 
answered and he himself held up to contumely in an Epilogus Responsiuus. 
(Boas, University Drama, 233.) Out of this jest grew the Gager-Rainolds 
Controversy, Rainolds thinking that Gager intended to satirize him, as 
he had formerly expressed some of the views which were satirized in 
Momus. This controversy seems to have been still before the public in 
1599, when there was published Th' Overthrow of Stage-Play es be way of 
controversie betwixt D. Gager and D. Rainolds, wherein all the reasons 
that can be made for them are notably refuted. 



220 Wily Beguiled 

student of the sister university. Moreover, the nature of the 
satire in Wily and development of the plot are entirely different 
from those of the plays of the Parnassus trilogy. There is none 
but the most ordinary verbal similarity, and there is the striking 
difference that whereas Philomusus, Studioso, and the others are 
continually voicing their discontent with their poverty, Sophos 
is quite satisfied with his material wealth: 

I am not rich, I am not very poore, 

I neither want nor euer shall exceede, 

The meane is my content, I liue twixt two extreames. 35 

That Wily Beguiled is a school play has been generally admitted. 
The fact that Beaumont seems to have used it, however, in con- 
structing his satire in The Knight of the Burning Pestle 36 seems 
to indicate that it was acted upon the London stage, and most likely 
Ward is right in conjecturing that it was a University play adapted 
for a London audience. 368 That the University at which it was 
originally performed, however, was not Cambridge but Oxford, 
I shall attempt to show by connecting Wily Beguiled with the lost 
Wylie Beguylie which was performed at Merton College, Oxford, 
during the Christmas holidays of 1566-7. 

IV 

By all odds the most interesting question connected with Wily 
Beguiled is the possibility of its being in some way related to 
the lost Wylie Beguylie. Mr. Boas, however, in writing about 
the University drama, has twice dodged this interesting issue. In 
the Cambridge History he laments the loss of Wylie Beguylie, 
but adds that as Wily Beguiled was influenced so directly by The 
Spanish Tragedy, The Merchant of Venice, and Romeo and Juliet, 
it is doubtful whether it can be connected with the Merton comedy 
of 1567. 37 But it seems that Wily Beguiled as we have it is a 
reworked play, and if it is, the question of its relation to Wylie 
Beguylie is at once reopened. Though he apparently did not 
suspect any relationship between the two plays, Professor Ward, 

85 Lines 790-792. 

"•See my note in Modern Language Notes, xxxv, 503-4. 

™*Eist. of Eng. Dram. Lit., n, 612. 

87 vi, 338 n. 



Baldwin Maxwell 221 

in a passage which I have already quoted, has suggested that Wily 
represents a revision of an earlier play. Professor Baskervill is 
the only writer I have found who suggests that Wily Beguiled may 
have been a reworking of Wylie Beguylie, all other critics taking 
a stand similar to that of Mr. Boas. In reviewing the University 
Drama in the Tudor Age, Mr. Baskervill criticises Mr. Boas for 
not discussing the possible relationship of the two plays, and ipoints 
out that the humor of Wily Beguiled is of a type no more subtle 
than that of Gammer Gurton's Needle?* The spirit of the whole 
play — or rather of all the comic scenes — certainly seems to belong 
to a period far earlier than 1600. The do you mark?, do: you 
understand?, do you see?, with which Will Cricket punctuates 
his longer speeches recall the See now? of Hodge. In a number 
of comic passages also Wily is reminiscent of the two earliest 
English comedies. Will, for instance, has the same queer grounds 
for hope in his love-making as have Ealph Eoister and Hodge : 

Truly I was neuer with hir, but I know I shall speed. For tother day 
she lookt on me and laugh t, and thats a good signe (ye know). 39 



38 Journal of English and Germanic Philology, xrv (1915), 620. 
*• Lines 104-06. Compare Ralph Roister Doister, I, ii, 163, 165-66: 
" I knowe she loveth me, but she dare not speake. 

She looked on me twentie tymes yesternight, 
And laughed so." 
And Gammer Gurton's Needle, rr, i, 62-4. 

" Kirstian Clack, Tom Simpsons maid, by the masse, corns hether 
to morow, 
iCham not able to say, betweene us what may hap; 
She smyled on me last Sunday, when ich put on my cap." 
Similarly Will's promise to Pegge in Wily Beguiled: 

"When thou art ready to sleepe, He be ready to snort: 
When thou art in health, He be in gladnesse," etc. (11. 680 ff.), 
recalls the famous letter of Ralph Eoister; while his "rolling, rattling, 
rumbling eloquence " : 

"Sweet Pegge, honny Pegge, fine Pegge, daintie Pegge, brave 
Pegge, kind Pegge, comely Pegge," (636-37), 
suggests the passage in Ralph Roister, rv, iii, 74-77: 

" Gentle mistresse Custance now, good mistresse Custance, 
Honey mistresse Custance now, sweete mistresse Custance, 
Golden mistresse Custance now, white mistresse Custance, 
'Silken mistresse Custance now, faire mistresse Custance." 

8 



222 Wily Beguiled 

Several of Will's speeches contain such doggerel passages as: 

But for a sweet face, a fine beard, comely corps, 

And a Carowsing Oodpeece, 

All England if it can 

Show mee such a man, 

To win a wench by gis, 

To clip, to coll, to kisse 

As William Cricket is. 40 

And again: 

Sweet hony, bonny, suger candie, Pegge, 

Whose face more faire, then Brocke my fathers Cow, 

Whose eyes do shine like bacon rine, 

Whose lips are blue of azure hue, 

Whose crooked nose downe to her chin doth bow. 41 

These passages, mixed with his singing of short snatches, his dan- 
cing, his talking to the audience, as in lines 427 ft, 669, 1584, and 
elsewhere, suggest that Will Cricket is much nearer the old vice 
than were the clowns of 1600. Then too, the chief humor of the 
last part of the play consists in Fortunatus' beating Eobin Good- 
fellow and Churms off the stage — an old comic device, though 
perhaps an eternal one. 

There are also several evident contradictions and incongruities 
in the play which make it seem that Wily Beguiled represents 
a reworking of an older play. The first passage suggesting re- 
vision is in scene iv. Until scene xvi all of Churms' plans turn 
out successfully. It is not until this scene that he receives his 
whipping at the hands of Fortunatus. It surprises us, therefore, 
to read in scene iv the following dialogue : 

Wil. Lawer wipe cleane: do you remember? 

Churms. Remember, why? 
Wil. Why since you know when. 

Churms. Since when ? 

Wil. Why since you were bumbasted, that your lubberly legges would 

not carrie your lobcocke bodie; 

When you made an infusion of your stinking excrements, 

in your stalking implements: 

O you were plaguy frayd, and fowly raide.** 



40 Lines 1532-38. 
•"Lines 441-445. 
42 Lines 358-366. Araid is used in this sense in Jack Juggler, I. 293. 



Baldwin Maxwell 223 

These lines can hardly be taken as a prophecy, nor can they well 
refer to a iprevious beating, for there is indication that the knavery 
of Churms had never before been discovered. When they are 
forced to flee, Robin tells Churms that they will "go into some 
place where wee are not knowne, and there set up the art of knav- 
erie with a second edition." 43 The references to the whipping 
must either have been inserted by one who did not take into con- 
sideration just at what point Churms had received his beating or 
have been transferred from the latter part of the play by some 
reviser who did not notice the incongruity. 

Again, either Will Cricket's inviting Eobin Goodfellow to his 
wedding or his expressed opinions of Eobin would seem to be a 
later insertion. The only time in the play at which Will meets 
Robin he is deathly afraid of him, and exclaims : 

. . . Sounds, I thinke he be a witch. ... lie speak him faire, and 
get out ons companie: for I am afraid on him. 44 

Again when Mother Midnight and Pegge are discussing Robin, 

Will adds: 

... I sweare by the bloud of my codpiece, 

An I were a woman I would lug off his lave eares, 

Or run him to death with a spit: and for his face, 

I thinke tis pittie there is not a lawe made, 

That it should be fellonie to name it in any other places 

then in baudie houses. 46 

Between these two speeches, however, when Will is telling Ploddail 
and Peter what guests he is to have at his wedding, he speaks of 
Robin in an entirely different manner. Speaking of the honest 
Dutch Cobbler who is to be his chief guest, Will adds: 

For hees an honest fellow, and a good fellow: 
And he begins to carrie the verie badge of good fellowship 
vpon his nose; that I do not doubt, but in time he wil prooue 
as good a Copper companion as Robin Goodfellowe himselfe. 

And then there wil be Robin Goodfellow, as good a drunken 
rogue as Hues: and Tom Shoomaker; and I hope you wil not 
deny that hees an honest man, . . . 
And a number of other honest rascals. . . .*• 



43 Lines 2241-2243. "Lines 457 ff. 45 Lines 1929-1934. 

"Lines 1648-1651, 1661-1663, 1665. 



224 Wily Beguiled 

The fear which Kobin instilled in Pegge is clearly shown in the 
opening lines of scene xv ; and in view of the embarrassment Kobin's 
ipresence would have caused all concerned, it is surprising that 
Will should have looked forward with such anticipation toward 
having him as a chief wedding guest. 

The style of Wily Beguiled, also, presents many difficulties, and 
there are numerous passages which suggest patchwork. Much of 
the verse is as smooth as that of any of Shakspere's predecessors, 
but interspersed with it are lines of poor meter, no polish, and 
an entirely different tone. Frequently a speech contains both 
prose and verse, as in the passage following line 520 : 

Now Sir, He fit my selfe to the olde crummy Churls hu- 
mors, and make them belieue He perswade Lelia to marry 
Peter Ploddall, and so get free accesse to the wench at my 
pleasure : 

Now oth other side He fall in with the Scholler, and him He 
handle cunningly too; 

He tell him that Lelia has acquainted me with hir loue to 
him: 

And for because hir Father much suspects the same, 
He mewes hir vp as men do mew their hawkes, 
And so restraines hir from hir Sophos sight. 
He say, because she doth repose more trust, 
Of secrecie in me, then in another man, 
In courtesie she hath requested me, 
To do hir kindest greetings to hir Loue. 47 

Starting as iprose, the speech ends as verse, the whole tone of the 
speech changing. Though the verse is by no means so good as 
most of the verse in the play, it is evident from such expressions 
as "and for because" and "hir Sophos sight" that the author 
was striving for meter. 

The speech of Sophos following line 283 clearly shows, I think, 
two hands. As Lelia and Nurse exeunt, Sophos says: 

Farewell my loue, faire fortune be thy guide. 

Now Sophos, now bethinke thy selfe 

How thou maist win her fathers will to knit this happie knot. 

Alas thy state is poore, thy friends are few, 

And feare forbids to tell my fates to friend: 

Well, He trie my Fortunes; 



Lines 519-533. 



Baldwin Maxwell 225 

And finde out some conuenient time, 
When as her fathers leysure best shal serue 
To conferre with him about faire Lelias loue. 

In the last four lines, beginning with " Well, He trie by For- 
tunes," the reader must notice a complete change. There is a 
distinct lowering in the style. These lines are not in the vein 
of bombastic pedantry that characterizes the speeches of Sophos 
throughout the play. In them we have, I think, slightly altered 
remnants of an earlier form of the play. 

Other passages that show differences in style and tone are those 
following lines 500, 968, 1005, 1763, 2000, 2021. Perhaps the 
best stylistic evidence for revision is to be seen in the speech of 
Eobin Goodfellow in lines 1005 and following: 

Why, Master Gripe he casts beyond the moone, 
And Churms is the only man, he puts in trust with his daugh- 
ter, and (He warrant) the old Churle would take it vpon his 
saluation, that he wil perswade her to marry Peter Ploddall: 
But He make a foole of Peter Ploddall, 
He looke him ith face and picke his purse, 
Whil'st Churms cosen him of his wench, 
And my old gandsir Holdfast of his daughter. 
And if he can do so: 

He teach him a trick to cosen him of his gold too. 
Now for Sophos, let him weare the willow garland, 
And play the melancholie Malecontent 
And plucke his hat downe in his sullen eyes, 
And thinke on Lelia, in these desert groues: 
Tis ynough for him to haue her, in his thoughts; 
Although he nere imbrace her in his armes. 
But now, theres a fine deuise comes in my head, 
To scarre the Scholler: 

You shall see, He make fine sport with him. 
They say, that euery day he keepes his walke 
Amongst these woods and melancholy shades, 
And on the barke of euerie senselesse tree 
Ingraues the tenour of his haples hope. 
USTow when hees at Venus altar at his Orisons; 
He put me on my great carnation nose 
And wrap me in a rowsing Calueskin suite, 
And come like some Hob goblin or some diuell, 
Ascended from the griesly pit of hell: 
And like a Scarbabe make him take his legges: 
He play the diuel, I warrant ye. 

It is immediately obvious that the five lines after the mention 



226 Wily Beguiled 

of Sophos and the lines describing his wanderings in the woods 
do not harmonize with the others. Their tone is distinctly more 
exalted. Though a few of the other lines could pass for blank 
verse, the majority of them are in prose, and should be so printed, 
as in the first part of the speech. Moreover, these lines are not 
necessary for the sense. The plan is set forth just as clearly if 
they be omitted. We have here, I believe, an instance of a redac- 
tor's leaving or only slightly reworking the lines of the original 
speech, in order to keep the original sense, but inserting a few lines 
of his own to improve or heighten the effect. 

It is also possible, I think, to point out at least two other instan- 
ces of insertion. The first and less evident is in scene xii, where 
Sylvanus appears with his band of " Nymphs and Satyres sing- 
ing." We are unprepared and not a little surprised at the entrance 
of Sylvanus into this apparently homely and unsophisticated domes- 
tic drama. The value of such an objection, perhaps worth little 
in itself, is enhanced by the evident contradiction in Sophos' 
speeches just after the Nymphs and Satyrs exeunt. As soon as 
the music ceases, Sophos, rising from the slumber he has enjoyed 
during the presence of the woodsprites, joyfully exclaims: 

What do I heare? what harmony is this? 
With siluer sound that glutteth Sophos eares? 
And driues sad passions from his heauy heart, 
Presaging some good future hap shall fall, 
After these blustring blasts of discontent. 48 

But if we may judge from the speeches immediately following, 
these sad passions, far from being driven from his heart, have 
only increased to make his heart more heavy. After greeting 
Fortunatus, Sophos laments: 

My mind sweet friend is like a mastlesse ship, 
Thats huld and tost vpon the surging seas, 
By Boreas bitter blasts and Eoles whistling winds, 
On Rockes and sands, farre from the wished port 
Whereon my silly ship desires to land; 
Faire Lelias loue that is the wished hauen, 
Wherein my wandring mind would take repose, 
For want of which my restlesse thoughts are tost: 
For want of which, all Sophos ioyes are lost. 49 



48 Lines 1335-1339. 4B Lines 1364-1372. 



Baldwin Maxwell 227 

This contradiction, though slight and unimportant in itself, 
assumes some importance in view of the imitation in the second 
speech from The Spanish Tragedy 50 and of the incompatibility 
of the dance and song of the Nymphs and Satyrs with the whole 
atmosphere of the play. Similarly the argument that the song 
and dance here, with the speeches immediately preceding and 
following, represent an insertion is strengthened by the fact that 
there is stronger evidence that the other song in the play is an 
insertion. This second passage is found in scene xvi. After 
putting Churms to flight and after uniting Sophos and Lelia, 
Fortunatus, when setting out to find his father, thus takes his 
leave of the lovers : 

Deare friend adieu, faire sister too farewel, 
Betake y our selues vnto some secret place: 
Vntil you heare from me how things fall out. 

Exit Fortunatus. 
Sophos. We both do wish a fortunate goodnight: 
Lelia. And pray the Gods to guide thy steps aright. 
Sophos. (Now come faire Lelia, lets betake our selues 
Vnto a little Hermitage hereby: 
And there to Hue obscured from the world 
Till fates and Fortune call vs thence away, 
To see the sunshine of our Nuptiall day. 
See how the twinkling Starres do hide their borrowed shine 
As halfe asham'd their luster so is stain'd, 
By Lelias beautious eyes that shine more bright, 
Then twinkling Starres do in a winters night: 
In such a night did Paris win his loue. 
Lelia. In such a night, Mneas prou'd vnkind. 
Sophos. In such a night did Troilus court his deare. 
Lelia. In such a night, faire Phyllis was betraid. 
Sophos. He proue as true as euer Troylus was. 
Lelia. And I as constant as Penelope. 
Sophos. Then let vs solace, and in loues delight, 
And sweet imbracings spend the liue-long night. 
And whilst loue mounts her on her wanton wings, 
Let Descant run on Musicks siluer strings. Exeunt. 

Then follows "A SONGE" of three stanzas. 

It is hardly necessary to call attention to the borrowing from 
The Merchant of Venice 51 or to the unnatural delay of the lovers 

M 8pan. Trag., n, ii, 7 ff . 

51 The Merchant of Venice, v, i. 



228 Wily Beguiled 

after their seeming start. But who sings this song? Does Sylva- 
nus again appear with his chorus of Nymphs and Satyrs? Or do 
Sophos and Lelia still further delay their departure? More likely 
it is sung off stage, as its purpose is to relate the passing of the 
night and the dawn of a new day. Though the action of the play 
extends over more than a fortnight, 52 at no other point did our 
author think it necessary to advise us of the lapse of time. Again 
it was not the custom of the author to end his scenes with rime 
tags. No other scene has the double couplet as here; indeed only 
one scene, scene ii, ends in a rime at all, and there the meter is 
so faulty that it contrasts sharply with the four lines with which 
this scene ends. 53 Further, it would seem that the song inter- 
venes between the wrong scenes. As I have said, the (purpose of 
the song is to announce the passing of the night and the beginning 
of the new day. But it would seem that night follows not after 
this scene, but after the next. Churms and Eobin, who realized 
that " all our shifting knauerie's knowne " and who were "afraid 
of euerie officer, for whipping," 54 would hardly wait until the 
next day to make their escape. 

In view, then, of the long delay of Sophos and Lelia in leaving 
the stage, of the borrowings from The Merchant of Venice, of the 
problem as to who shall sing the song, of the rimes closing the scene, 
and of the failure to observe when one day ended and another 
began, we would, I think, be justified in identifying this passage 
as the work of a late redactor who, having inserted among other 
lines the lines borrowed from The Merchant of Venice, realized 
ihat he had emphasized its being night, and so inserted also, with- 
out remembering the content of the following scene, the song to 
advise us that 

Aurora smiles with merry cheere, 
>*£.:&• . To welcome in a happy day. 

The argument that Wily Beguiled had existed in an earlier 
form is greatly strengthened by the spasmodic appearance of 

52 See lines 1391-1392 and 1415-U16. 
63 The lines closing scene ii are : 

All this makes for my auaile, 

He ha the wench my selfe, or else my wits shall faile. 

M Lines 2231-2234. 



Baldwin Maxwell 229 

country or southern dialect. There are six and only six cases 
of dialect in the play. iMother Midnight uses it but twice; in 
lines; 1166 and 2480 she exclaims "by my vay," though in the 
same lines she says "for/' and everywhere else in the play pro- 
nounces / as /. Old Ploddall in lines 1556, 1562, and 2206, says 
"vortie shillings/' though everywhere else in his many speeches 
he correctly pronounces the /. It cannot be that these two words 
were thus peculiarly pronounced by the author or printer, for 
"forty" occurs equally as often as "vorty." Neither can these 
occurrences be explained by lack of type, for in one place in which 
the dialect is used it is clearly meant to be humorous. Ploddall, 
meeting with Kobin who has just been beaten by Fortunatus, says 
to him relative to the money he has promised him for "fraying 
the Scholler " : "I sent you vorty shillings, and you shal have the 
cheese I promised you too." Eobin replies : " A plague on the 
vorty shillings, and the cheese too." 55 The humor of dialect, like 
the humor of the characterizing phrase, depends entirely upon 
repetition or constant use. It is inconceivable that any dramatist 
should seek to secure humor by carefully inserting six bits of 
dialect four or five hundred lines apart. The appearance of- this 
dialect can only be explained, I think, by our assuming that we 
have an older play containing dialect, which was revised by one 
who for some reason wished to eliminate the dialect. Six bits 
escaped his attention. 

I have called attention to the broad and early type of humor 
in the comic scenes, the evident contradictions, the apparent patch- 
work of the style, three seeming insertions, and the unexplainable 
use of dialect. If upon these grounds we may assume the exist- 
ence of an earlier form of the play, what must have been the nature 
of the revision? Most of the scenes in which Sophos, Lelia, and 
Fortunatus speak are written in blank verse with a fluency not 
found in comedies before the nineties. If Wily Beguiled is a 
revision of an earlier play, there is no doubt that the play was 
most thoroughly reworked. It is not incredible, however, that 
a reviser may have followed strictly the promise of Wilmot, who 
in 1591 declared that Tancred and Gismund was " Newly reuiued 
and polished according to the decorum of these daies." B6 Such 

** Lines 2206-2209. 

88 Title-page, edition of 1591 ; facsimile in Malone Society Reprint, 1914- 



230 Wily Beguiled 

was the case, I believe, with Wily Beguiled. The earlier play 
must have been written in doggerel, or possibly in both prose and 
doggerel; and the reviser, while keeping in the main the substance 
of the play and the content of the various speeches, must have 
worked over the play, eliminating the greater part of the rime, 
turning most of the speeches of the nobler characters into blank 
verse, and inserting other material wherever he deemed it ex- 
pedient. His reworking, however, was not perfect. He failed to 
observe several evident contradictions; and frequently the smooth- 
ness of the lines inserted contrasts sharply with the crudity of 
the original lines which, for connection or sense, he retained or 
only slightly modified. 

If Wily Beguiled as we have it is a revised play, one cannot of 
course say that it was influenced so directly by The Spanish Tra- 
gedy, The Merchant of Venice, and Romeo and Juliet that it cannot 
be connected with the Merton College play of 1567. On the con- 
trary there are numerous features which suggest that Wily Beguiled 
is related to Wylie Beguylie. In the first place, as has frequently 
been pointed out, Wily Beguiled seems to have been a school play. 
The scholar Sophos is just the type of hero that would please a 
University audience. Speeches such as that of Will Cricket in 
line 397 and following, likewise suggest that the play was intended 
for a University audience. Speaking of Lelia and Sophos, Will 
says: 

Nay, I dare take it on my death she loues him, 
For hees a scholler: and ware schollers, they haue tricks for 
loue yfaith, for with a little Logicke & pitome colloquium 
theile make a wench do any thing. 

The moral of the play is that learning is much to be preferred 
to riches. Gripe, gaping after gold, prefers the rich fool to the 
poor scholar. But not so with the heroine. 

But Lelia scorn's proud Mammon's golden mines, 
And better likes of learnings sacred lore, 
Then of fond Fortunes glistering mockeries. 57 

In the end, however, Gripe repents: 

Hir choyce was virtuous, but my wil was base, 
I sought to grace hir from the Indian Mines, 



67 Lines 263-265. 



Baldwin Maxwell 231 

But she sought honour from the starrie Mount: 
What franticke fit possest my foolish braine? 
What furious fancie fired so my heart, 
To hate f aire Virtue and to scorne desert ? K 

Fortunatus voices the moral of the play when reprimanding his 
father's greed: 

Where golden gaine doth bleare a fathers eyes, 

That pretious pearle fetcht from Pernassus mount, 

Is counted refuse, worse then Bullen brasse; 

Both ioyes and hope hang of a silly twine, 

That still is subiect vnto flitting time: 

That tournes ioy into griefe, and hope to sad despaire, 

And ends his dayes in wretched worldly care. 

Were I the richest Monarch vnder heauen, 

And had one daughter thrice as faire, 

As was the Grecian Menelaus wife, 

Ere I would match hir to an vntaught swaine, 

Though one whose wealth exceeded Croesus store, 

Hir selfe should choose, and I applaud hir choise, 

Of one more poore then euer Sophos was, 

Were his deserts but equall vnto his. 

As she in Natures graces doth excell: 
iSo doth Minerua grace him full as well. 69 

It has also been noted that, as in all school plays, the Epilogue 
closes with a request for a plaudite. 

Further, it would seem that both plays are to be connected with 
the Christmas holidays. Wylie Beguylie we know was performed 
during the Christmas season ; 60 and Wily Beguiled possesses many 
characteristics which would lead us to connect it with Christmas. 
Eobin Goodfellow's plan to frighten Sophos by putting on his 
" great carnation nose " suggests the " feynyd berdis, peyntid 
visers, diffourmyd or colourid visages," against the use of which 
at Christmas laws were passed so frequently. 61 Among the oldest 

88 Lines 2373-2378. 

"Lines 2336-2350, 2353-2354. 

"° Merton College MS. Register, Jan. 3, 1566/7; quoted by Boas, Uni- 
versity Drama, p. 157. 

61 See Riley, Memorials of London, pp. 193, 534, 561, 669; and Basker- 
vill, " Dramatic Aspects of Medieval Folk Festivals in England," Studies 
in Philology (University of North Carolina), xvii, 34. 



232 Wily Beguiled 

of the Christmas sports was the beast dance, in which the per- 
formers dressed themselves in the skins of animals. 62 Very early, 
too, do we find references to characters impersonating fiends in 
the Christmas plays ; 63 and in the Christmas games Eobin Good- 
fellow was frequently a very prominent figure. 64 In Wily Beguiled 
Eobin not only masquerades as a devil by dressing in a calf's 
skin, but even speaks of his costume as his " Christmas Calue skin 
sute." 65 Churms, too, assumes the role of a Christmas figure 
when he is spoken of by the Nurse as " the knaue of clubs. 5 ' 6 * 
From passages in Rowlands' Knave of Clubs and in Like Will 
to Like we learn that it was the custom to dub the arch-knave 
the Knave of Clubs, and the latter passage indicates that this 
dubbing was connected with the Christmas sports. Newfangle, 
in deciding whether Tom Tosspot or Ralph Roister is the verier 
knave, says : 

And I (Master Judge) will so bring to pass, 

'That I will judge who shall be knave of clubs at Christmas. 87 



• 2 Chambers, Mediaeval Stage, I, 166, 258, 391, etc. 

t3 Acc. Ld. High Treas. Soot., vol. n, 350 (1502) : "Item, be the kingis 
command, to Sainct Nicholas beschop, iij Franch crounis . . . Item, to the 
deblatis and ruffyis vij." Ibid., rv, 87 (1507) : "To Sanct Nicholais . . . 
xxviijs. 'To his ruffyis, ixs." Quoted in New English Dictionary under 
Ruffy. Robin Goodfellow derived many of his characteristics from the 
devil — as, for instance, his Ho, Ho, Ho — 'and no doubt many of these 
borrowings were due to the analogy between Robin and Ruffyn, a conven- 
tional name for the devil in the mysteries. 

w Jonson introduced him into his Twelfth Night masque of Love Re- 
stored, iln Mercurius Fumigosus, or the Smoking Nocturnall, no. 32, Jan. 
3-10, 1665 (reprinted in Hazlitt, Fairy Tales, Legends, and Romances, p. 
337) is a passage describing Robin's pranks on Twelfth Night. Robin is 
the leading character of Tell-Trothes New-Yeares Gift, ed. Furnivall, New 
Shale. Soc. Publ., 1876. And in Heywood's Hierarchie of Angells, 1635, 
p. 574, we learn that 

Robin Good-fellowes some, some call them fairies. 
In solitarie roomes these uprores keepe, 
And beat at dores to wake men from their sleepe; 
(Seeming to force locks, be they ne're so strong, 
And keeping Christmasse gambols all night long. 

65 Line 1257. 
69 Line 1758. 
87 The Knave of Clubbs, Percy Society Publications, rx, iv, lines 7-14. 



Baldwin Maxwell 233 

Moreover, there is a Christmas mummers' play from Lincoln- 
shire, written down in 1824, in which there appear several speeches 
almost identical with speeches in the Induction to Wily Beguiled.®* 
The Induction could hardly have been based upon the mummers' 
play: not only are a number of words obviously misunderstood 
in the latter (a fact which could easily be explained by its oral 

Like Will to Like, Hiazlitt's Dodsley, in, 332. The knave of clubs was 
probably connected with the Twelfth Night sport of choosing the King and 
Queen. Pepys three times mentions this sport, and under Twelfth Night, 
1665-6, narrates how the party turned " to choose King and Queene, and a 
good oake there was, but no marks found; but I privately found the clove, 
the mark of the knave, and privately put it into Captain Cocke's piece, 
which made some mirth, because of his lately being known by his buying 
of clove and mace in the East India prizes." 

68 Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 33418. The following are the speeches resembling 
the Induction of Wily: 

" Fool. ia pitiful case indeed Madam Hey Ho ! wher's all this/ paltry 
poor; still paltry in this place, and yet not perfect for/ shame, step forth 
people's eyes look's dim with a very red/ expectation. 

1st Bibboner. How now m'e Amorous George still as live and as/ 
blyth and as mad and as melancholy as that Mantletree./ What play 
have you got here today 

Fool Play boy 

Rib Yes play/ I look upon the Tittle of the spectimony once a year 
you old/ scallibush nothing but parch penny, worth tufcoal/ callyely old 
callymuf's you moiling, boiling bangling/ fool stand out of my sight. 

Fool Zounds what a man/ have I got here 

Rib man you mistake in me I'm no talker/ I am a Juggler I can shew 
you the trick of the twelves as/ many trickes as there are days in the year 
toils and moils/ and motes in the Sun. I have them all upon my Finger 
end/ Jack in the loft quick and be gone. 

Fool. How man I'l warrant the 

Ribr Hey now man I see thou can do something, hold thy hand,/ 
here's a shilling for thy labour; take that to the poltry of/ the poor and 
throw unto them, say thou hast quite lost the/ title of this play, cally- 
flaskin jest shall stenge our sight/ and you shall hear a new delight." 
The opening lines show that it is a Christmas play: 

Gentlemen and Ladies 

I'm come to see you all/ 
This merry time of Christmas, 

I neither knock nor call; . ./ 

For a copy of this mummers' play and for innumerable other suggestions 
I am indebted to Professor C. R. Baskervill of the University of Chicago. 



234 Wily Beguiled 

transmission), but the passage in question has no connection with 
the mummers' play as a whole. The play indeed seems to be 
merely a combination of other Christmas plays, as several other 
stanzas are practically identical with stanzas in The Revesby 
Sword Play. 69 The meter of the play, too, indicates that the lines 
common to the play and the Induction were later additions, they 
being the only lines in the play which are not in rime. Either the 
Induction was used by the author of the mummers' play or there 
was an older Christmas play from which both the Induction and 
the mummers' play borrowed. Whichever may have been the 
case, we have added reason for connecting Wily Beguiled with 
the Christmas season. 

Again, about the time that Wily Beguiled was being prepared 
for the stage, there is a probability that other Oxford plays were 
being reworked. We have records of only three other plays as 
performed at Oxford about the time that Wylie Beguylie was 
performed. The first and second parts of Palaemon and Arcyte 
were performed on September 2 and 4, 1566; Wylie Beguylie was 
performed during the Christmas season of 1566-7 ; and Damon and 
Pithias followed just a year later. In Henslowe's Diary are 
recorded a lost play Palaemon and Arcyte, 1594, and a lost play 
by Chettle, Damon and Pithias, 1600. 70 As Wily Beguiled was 

88 In the opening speech, the fool says : 

My name is noble Anthony 

I'm as live and as/ blyth and as mad 

and as melancholy as that mantletree/ 

make room for noble Anthony 
and all his Jovial Company. 

Compare the speech of the fool in The Revesby Sword Play, Manly, i, 305. 
Compare the speech of Pepper Britches, Manly, i, 308, with the following 
speech of the Third Ribboner: 

I am my Fathers eldest Son 

and heir of all his Lands/ 
and hope in a short time 

it will all fall in my hands. 

I was/ brought up at Linsecourt 

all the days of my life, 
I'm/ walking with this Lady fair 

I wish she was my wife. . ./ 
70 Greg, i, 19 and 118. 



Baldwin Maxwell 235 

probably reworked within a year or eighteen months after the 
second of these two lost plays, the suggestion immediately presents 
itself that the dramatists in their mad rush for plots seized upon 
and revised these three early Oxford plays. 

This suggestion is strengthened by the fact that if one compares 
Wily Beguiled with the plays which we have of the time of Wylie 
Beguylie, one finds that those characteristics which the original 
of Wily Beguiled must have possessed are to be found in plays 
contemporary with the earlier Wylie. Most likely the original 
was in doggerel, the reviser carefully eliminating most of the rime. 
Possibly, however, the original was in prose, with no more doggerel 
passages than appear in the revision. But it would not have 
been surprising even had Wylie Beguylie been in prose, for The 
Supposes, performed the year before, is in prose. As I have said, 
the original must have contained a considerable amount of dialect. 
That dialect was popular in the sixties is shown in Damon and 
Pithias by Edwards' introducing the figure of Grim the Collier 
with his country dialect into the court of Dionysius. Wily Be- 
guiled abounds in proverbs and familiar phrases, and that these 
were popular in the plays of the sixties is attested by the great 
number of such phrases that Gascoigne in The Supposes and the 
translator of Bug go ears insert into their translations with no 
authority whatever from the original. 

Again, Wylie Beguylie, to have been the original of Wily Be- 
guiled, must have shown considerable Italian influence, for Wily 
Beguiled has the conventional characters — the pedant, the nurse, 
and the parasite — and the Italian fondness for disguised rogues. 
Tricks played upon the pedant were also common in Italian 
comedy. In 11 Marescalco, for instance, a boy attaches a fire- 
cracker to the pedant's coat-tails and sets it alight. Compare 
with this trick Robin Goodfellow's plan to frighten the scholar 
by dressing as a devil. And a similar disguise is, of course, found 
in Bug gb ears. 

Mr. Boas states that "The first University play with a plot of 
undoubted Italian origin was Hymenaeus, acted at St. John's, 
probably in March, 1578-9." 71 But we have no right whatever 
to assume that Hymenaeus was the first University play showing 

71 University Drama in the Tudor Age, p. 134. 



236 Wily Beguiled 

Italian influence, for, as Mr. Boas says later, " At Oxford, as at 
Cambridge, the records of the University stage for a period of 
nearly fifteen years after Elizabeth's visit are very meagre. No 
extant plays can be assigned to this time, and the account books 
of Christ Church and St. John's College, which would doubtless 
have furnished some details of theatrical entertainments, are 
unfortunately missing till 1577-8 and 1579-80 respectively." 72 
It is obvious that we cannot, with such incomplete records, assert 
there were no Italian plays at the Universities. On the contrary, 
in view of the great vogue of Italian literature in England during 
these years, it is highly probable that Italian plays were performed 
at the Universities. According to the dating of Mr. Bond, its 
last editor, Bugghears, based primarily upon Grazzini's La Spiri- 
tata, was performed in 1564 or 1565. Mr. Boas does not discuss 
Bugghears, though Herr Grabau had thought that the manuscript 
bore traces of the school origin of the play. The elaborateness with 
which the music is copied into the manuscript does suggest that it 
was a school play. But whether it be a school play or not, it bears 
witness of an Italian drama's serving as the source of an English 
play as early as 1565. In 1566 The Supposes, which had been 
translated from Ariosto by George Gascoigne, was performed at 
Gray's Inn. In the same year appeared the first part of Painter's 
Pallace of Pleasure; in the next, the second part of Painter 
and Geoffrey Fenton's Tragicall Discourses from Bandello via 
Belleforest. The tremendous popularity of these Italian stories 
is shown in the attack by Roger Ascham, who, it will be remem- 
bered, died in 1568, upon "the fond books of late translated out 
of Italian into English, sold in every shop in London, commended 
by honest titles the sooner to corrupt honest manners " ; 73 and 
that they furnished the plots for many plays is indicated by 
Gosson's denouncing in 1579 the Pallace of Pleasure as among the 
works which " have beene thoroughly ransackt to furnish the playe- 
houses in London." T4 Amidst this great enthusiasm for Italian 
literature, would it be surprising that an Oxford play of 1567 

1,2 Ibid., p. 157. 

73 Schoolmaster, Little Classics edition, SI. 

^ Plays Confuted in Five Actions, quoted by Brooke, The Tudor Drama, 
p. 234. 



Baldwin Maxwell 237 

should adopt several of the conventional characters and situations 
of Italian comedy? 

To summarize — for the six following reasons I believe that Wily 
Beguiled is a reworked form of the Merton College Wylie Beguylie : 

1. Wily Beguiled is evidently a revised play. 

2. Its content indicates that it was undoubtedly a school play. 

3. Both plays seem to be connected with the Christmas season. 

4. The humor of Wily Beguiled is of a type no more subtle 
than that of plays contemporary with Wylie Beguylie. 

5. There is indication that about the same time that Wily 
Beguiled must have been reworked other Oxford plays were being 
reworked. 

6. Those characteristics which the original of Wily Beguiled 
must have possessed are found in plays contemporary with Wylie 
Beguylie. 

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